Jess

“I was a glaring blot on the perfection. But I didn't care: I didn't feel I owed him beauty.”
― Naomi Novik, Uprooted

“Don't we teach our women to view all men according to the actions of a few?”
― Tamora Pierce, The Will of the Empress

“All my life,” she said, “I have been told ‘go’ and ‘come.’ I am told how I will live, and I am told how I must die. I must be a man’s servant and a mare for his pleasure, or I must hide myself behind walls and surrender my flesh to a cold, silent god. I would walk into the jaws of hell itself, if it were a path of my own choosing. I would rather die tomorrow in the forest than live a hundred years of the life appointed me. Please. Please let me help you.”
― Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale

“It wasn't that I wanted a husband and a baby; I didn't, or rather, I only wanted them the way I wanted to live to a hundred: someday, far off, never thinking about the particulars.”
― Naomi Novik, Uprooted